Rv2022c Family assigned · medium auto-curated

H37Rv Rv2022c · MTBC0 mtbc0_002152 · 201 aa · 2290732–2291337 MTBC0 (-) · RefSeq NP_216538.1

Genomic neighbourhood (genome browser)

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Annotation: from legacy to revised

Legacy (H37Rv / Mycobrowser)hypothetical protein
MTBC0 PGAP re-annotationtype II toxin-antitoxin system RelE/ParE family toxin
Revised (this work)Type II toxin-antitoxin system RelE/ParE family toxin. Pfam: Gp49 (PF05973.21).
Functional category (TubercuList)conserved hypotheticals

Auto-curated: this verdict and function were generated by rules from PGAP + Pfam + Foldseek and have not been hand-reviewed.

In the literature (TB corpus sweep) 2 publications

Found under: H37Rv (2).

2 TB publications mention this gene. 2 publication(s) mention this gene (title/abstract), verified against the text. The atlas states the function; these are the primary sources that discuss it.

PublicationDate
HigA2 (Rv2021c) Is a Transcriptional Regulator with Multiple Regulatory Targets in Mycobacterium tuberculosis. doi:10.3390/microorganisms12061244 2024
Bioinformatic and empirical analysis of novel hypoxia-inducible targets of the human antituberculosis T cell response. doi:10.4049/jimmunol.1202281 2012

This layer CITES the literature, it does not change the verdict or the function. A gene may be heavily studied (as an antigen, a resistance determinant, a drug target) while its molecular function is settled elsewhere in the fiche. This distinguishes a gene that is dark because nobody has looked from one that is dark despite having been studied. Source: PubMed (whole), MULTI-ALIAS sweep: H37Rv locus tag AND every ortholog identifier (M. bovis Mb…, M. marinum MMAR_…, M. smegmatis MSMEG_…, M. leprae ML…, M. abscessus MAB_…), each hit VERIFIED against the abstract text (word-boundary regex). phase73/phase75, 2026-07-13.

Conditional expression context (iModulons)

Member of 1 independently-modulated gene set(s): Lsr2 (lsr2).

iModulon membership (independently-modulated gene sets from a 647-sample RNA-seq compendium): the conditional co-expression context. Co-expression is a regulatory context, NOT a molecular function. Source: iModulonDB / modulome_mtb (Yoo 2022).

CRISPRi vulnerability

Vulnerability index 1.26 (95% CI -0.58 to 4.01). A more negative index = more vulnerable to knockdown (better drug-target quality); indicative threshold VI ≤ -6 = highly vulnerable.

Quantitative CRISPRi knockdown, graded (finer than binary Tn-seq essentiality). Source: CRISPRi vulnerability index (Bosch 2021, pebble.rockefeller.edu).

Legacy record & comparison (Mycobrowser) ahead of Mycobrowser

Mycobrowser classes this locus among conserved hypotheticals; the atlas now assigns a functional handle (curated function (UniProt)). Mycobrowser is no longer maintained, so its EC numbers predate recent nomenclature revisions (e.g. the 2018 EC 7 "translocase" class) — most EC differences are re-numberings of the same enzyme, not conflicts.

Orthologues (reciprocal best hits across mycobacteria)

M. bovis Mb2045c · 99.5% identity
M. orygis RJtmp_002091 · 99.0% identity

Reciprocal-best-hit orthologues (DIAMOND) against the Mycobrowser reference proteomes. A missing species is informative: e.g. a gene absent from M. leprae was likely lost in its reductive genome evolution. Locus tags link to Mycobrowser.

Curated reference (UniProt)

UniProt O53468 SwissProt · reviewed · Evidence at protein level
UniProt namePutative toxin HigB2
Curated functionPutative toxic component of a type II toxin-antitoxin (TA) system. Its cognate antitoxin would be HigA2.

UniProt still lists this protein as Putative toxin HigB2; the revised annotation above is ahead of the current UniProt record.

Functional vocabulary (eggNOG-mapper, orthology transfer)

COG category S Function unknown
eggNOG descriptionPhage derived protein Gp49-like (DUF891)
Orthologous groupCOG4683

Orthology-based transfer (eggNOG 5.0.2, diamond). EC/KO/GO/CAZy are computed annotations, not manual curation; cross-check against the primary literature before treating a specific reaction as established.

Conservation & selection (intra-MTBC, 145 209 strains)

pN/pS 0.852 · relaxed/neutral
Polymorphic sites (≥ 0.1% of strains) 4 synonymous, 11 missense, 0 nonsense, 0 frameshift

pN/pS from segregating SNPs (singletons removed) normalised by possible sites. Low pN/pS = purifying selection (a strong signal that a "hypothetical" is a real, constrained gene). A high pN/pS is ambiguous: relaxed constraint or positive selection (drug resistance, antigenic variation) inflate it; e.g. rpoB/katG/pncA score high here for resistance, not loss of function. A clonal disruption (one allele over a clade) suggests lineage pseudogenisation; a convergent one (many independent alleles) is typical of resistance loss-of-function.

Outgroup conservation (beyond the MTBC) Mycobacterium

M. canettii dN/dS (deep-divergence selection) 0.62 · 10 consensus substitution(s)
elevated dN/dS vs M. canettii (0.62) — relaxed or positive selection at deep divergence
Genus-wide presence (~53 non-MTBC Mycobacterium) present in 8/53 (15%) · mean identity 48.1% · 0/4 closest MTBAP relatives
present in a subset of the genus (8/53 NTM; in 0 of the 4 closest MTBAP relatives) — partial/intermediate conservation
Phylostratum (deepest detected homolog) MTBC-specific Mycobacterium Mycobacteriaceae Corynebacteriales Actinomycetia Bacteria

present across the genus Mycobacterium (NTM) but not detected in any non-Mycobacterium genome — a Mycobacterium-genus gene

Two orthogonal outgroup signals. M. canettii (the immediate outgroup) gives a deep-divergence dN/dS (a low value confirms a constrained, real gene; shown as confident only at ≥8 substitutions, else flagged low-power). Genus-wide presence/absence (tblastn vs assembled non-MTBC genomes) places the gene on the ancient-core ↔ MTBC-specific axis: a gene absent even from the closest MTBAP relatives is a candidate MTBC-specific innovation (possible host-adaptation factor, to confirm by synteny). The phylostratum extends that axis outside the genus (tblastn vs 13 reference genomes spanning Mycobacteriaceae → Corynebacteriales → Actinomycetia → outside the phylum): it is the deepest clade in which a homolog is still detected, i.e. a proxy for gene age. Read it with the null model in mind: a shallow (young) stratum can also reflect homology-detection failure for short or fast-evolving ORFs, so it is a descriptive axis, not a proof of novelty.

Essentiality (transposon mutagenesis)

DeJesus 2017 callGA · growth-advantage
What the call meansgrowth-advantage: insertions enriched
TA sites (Himar1) 14 in the ORF — 0 in the essential state, 0 growth-defect, 0 non-essential, 14 growth-advantage. Saturation 1.000, mean read count 279.785714286. A region of the protein devoid of TA sites is invisible to this assay: nothing can be inferred about it, in either direction.

Genome-wide Himar1 transposon essentiality in H37Rv (DeJesus 2017). An essential call (ES/ESD/GD) is strong, independent evidence that a "hypothetical" locus encodes a functional, selectively required gene — orthogonal to intra-species conservation.

Proteomics (mass spectrometry) detected

MS detectiondetected in 10 of 16 independent MS datasets
Integrated abundance24.7 ppm · rank 2199/3519 (37.5th percentile)

Detection by mass spectrometry is direct, experimental evidence that the protein product exists — orthogonal to sequence conservation and to Tn-seq essentiality, and especially decisive for a "hypothetical" locus. Reproducible detection across several independent datasets (PaxDb) makes the existence claim robust; the integrated abundance places the protein in the proteome's dynamic range.

Physico-chemical properties (computed, ProtParam)

Length201 aa
Molecular weight22.8 kDa
Theoretical pI7.0
GRAVY-0.398 (hydrophilic)
Aliphatic index77.3
Aromaticity0.095
Instability index48.4 (unstable)

Computed from the ancestral MTBC0 sequence with the ExPASy ProtParam method (Biopython). Descriptive biophysical context: a positive GRAVY flags a hydrophobic (often membrane) protein, a high instability index (>40) predicts a short in-vitro half-life, an extreme pI hints at compartment or binding partner.

Domains (Pfam, hmmscan --cut_ga)

PfamAccessioni-EvalueResiduesDescription
Gp49PF05973.21 1.2e-2087–181 Phage derived protein Gp49-like (DUF891)

Genomic context (neighbours & predicted operon) operon of 3

Upstream (5' on genome)Rv2021c (- strand, 8 bp gap)
Downstream (3' on genome)Rv2023c (- strand, 24 bp gap)
Predicted operon Rv2021c · Rv2022c · Rv2023c

Neighbours from the H37Rv annotation (- strand). The operon is predicted by co-directional intergenic distance (same strand, gaps ≤50 bp) — a transcription-unit hypothesis, not a mapped TSS. For a "hypothetical", co-transcription with a characterised operon is a concrete functional lead (complements the STRING neighborhood channel below).

Functional interaction network (STRING v12, guilt-by-association)

Explore full network →

Node colour = verdict, dashed = hypothetical; edge colour = evidence (green experimental, orange genomic-context, grey co-expression), width ∝ score. Click a partner to open its page; "Explore full network" to walk the graph.

Closest characterised functional partner: higA2 (transcriptional regulator), high confidence from genomic context alone (score 981 excluding text-mining). This association is the citable seed of a function hypothesis for this hypothetical protein.

PartnerProductScoreNo text-miningChannels (≥400)
Rv2021c higA2 transcriptional regulator 998 981 ctx neighborhood:786 fusion:648 cooccurence:771 textmining:912
Rv3183 higA3 transcriptional regulator 927 800 ctx cooccurence:773 textmining:651
Rv2023c hyp hypothetical protein 713 713 ctx neighborhood:711
Rv2020c Rv2020c, (MTV018.07c), len: 99 aa. Conserved hypothetical protein, nearly identical to C-terminal part of hypothetical protein RvD1-Rv2024c' 565 564 ctx neighborhood:558
Rv1956 higA antitoxin HigA 784 252 textmining:724
Rv3384c vapC46 ribonuclease VapC46 673 177 textmining:620
Rv3750c vapB50 excisionase 607 170 textmining:547
Rv2866 relG toxin RelG 454 169
Rv2865 relF antitoxin RelF 510 167 textmining:436
Rv0918 hyp hypothetical protein 504 160 textmining:434
Rv3749c vapC50 hyp hypothetical protein 693 157 textmining:651
Rv0065 vapC1 ribonuclease VapC1 501 153 textmining:436
Rv0268c hyp hypothetical protein 541 59 textmining:533
Rv3188 hyp hypothetical protein 445 55 textmining:437
Rv1955 higB toxin HigB 809 52 textmining:807

STRING combines evidence channels (neighborhood, fusion, cooccurrence, coexpression, experimental, database, text-mining) into a 0–1000 score. The ctx badge marks edges carried by the genomic-context channels (conserved neighborhood, fusion, phylogenetic co-occurrence), which are independent of orthology and structure and the strongest signal for an unknown gene. The exp badge marks an experimentally-supported partner (measured interaction, experimental/database channel ≥400) as opposed to a purely predicted one — but note that the M. tuberculosis experimental interactome is dominated by a noisy bacterial-two-hybrid screen, so a strong measured link that contradicts the operon/localisation context is likely a false positive. The no text-mining column recomputes the score from data alone, so a link that does not depend on the literature is visible. Association is a function hypothesis, not proof: corroborate with the operon context and the primary literature before assigning a function.

Evidence

  • Legacy H37Rv annotation: hypothetical protein
  • MTBC0 PGAP product: type II toxin-antitoxin system RelE/ParE family toxin
  • Pfam (hmmscan --cut_ga): Gp49 PF05973.21 (E=1e-20)
  • (auto-curated by rules from PGAP + Pfam + Foldseek; not hand-reviewed)

Sources

  • Ancestral sequence & coordinates: Harrison LB et al. (2024), An imputed ancestral reference genome for the MTBC, doi:10.1101/2023.09.07.556366
  • Product annotation: NCBI PGAP on MTBC0; legacy from H37Rv NC_000962.3 (RefSeq NP_216538.1)
  • Domains: Pfam-A via hmmscan --cut_ga — Gp49 (PF05973.21)
  • Sequence-level signal: ESM Atlas (EvolutionaryScale × BioHub) — exploratory
  • Controlled vocabulary: eggNOG-mapper 2.1.12 (Cantalapiedra et al. 2021, doi:10.1093/molbev/msab293), eggNOG 5.0 DB (Huerta-Cepas et al. 2019) — OG COG4683
  • Curated reference: UniProt O53468 (SwissProt, reviewed; Evidence at protein level)
  • Intra-MTBC selection: pN/pS and disruption from SPDI variants of 145 209 MTBC strains (this work, local collection vs H37Rv NC_000962.3)
  • Genome-wide structure: AlphaFold DB model (Jumper et al. 2021, doi:10.1038/s41586-021-03819-2; Varadi et al. 2024, doi:10.1093/nar/gkad1011) searched vs PDB with Foldseek (mean pLDDT 73.1)
  • Interaction network: STRING v12.0 (Szklarczyk et al. 2023, doi:10.1093/nar/gkac1000), taxon 83332, CC-BY 4.0 — 27 functional partner(s); context anchor higA2
  • Essentiality: genome-wide transposon mutagenesis in H37Rv — DeJesus et al. 2017 (mBio, doi:10.1128/mBio.02133-16, CC BY)
  • Proteomics: integrated mass-spectrometry abundance from PaxDb 5.0 (Huang et al. 2023, doi:10.1016/j.mcpro.2023.100640), taxon 83332 — weighted average of 16 datasets, incl. Schubert et al. 2013 (doi:10.1016/j.chom.2013.04.008) and Albrethsen et al. 2013 (doi:10.1074/mcp.M112.018846)
  • Functional category: TubercuList scheme (Cole et al. 1998, doi:10.1038/31159), via Mycobrowser (Kapopoulou et al. 2011, doi:10.1016/j.tube.2010.09.006)
  • Orthologues: reciprocal best hits (DIAMOND, Buchfink et al. 2021, doi:10.1038/s41592-021-01101-x) against Mycobrowser release 5 reference proteomes
  • Genomic context / operon: H37Rv annotation; operon predicted by co-directional intergenic distance (Salgado et al. 2000, doi:10.1073/pnas.030539397)
  • Physico-chemical properties: ExPASy ProtParam method via Biopython (Gasteiger et al. 2005), computed from the MTBC0 sequence
  • Primary literature: none located yet; annotation rests on the domain/homology sources above.

Ancestral MTBC0 protein sequence

>mtbc0_002152|Rv2022c|
MNVPWENAHGGALYCLIRGDEFSAWHRLLFQRPGCAESVLACRHFLDGSPVARCSYPEEYHPCVISRIALLCDSVGWTADVERISAWLNGLDRETYELVFAAIEVLEEEGPALGCPLVDTVRGSRHKNMKELRPGSQGRSEVRILFAFDPARQAIMLAAGNKAGRWTQWYDEKIKAADEMFAEHLAQFEDTKPKRRKRKKG